Engineering Commons^™

Landfill Elevated Internal Temperature Detection And Landfill Fire Index Assessment For Fire Monitoring, Aurora Musilli

Theses and Dissertations

Landfill fires are becoming a real threat to both people and environment due to lack of predictions and control methods. Processing of the infrared band from level-1 satellite images was employed and decades worth of archived data from USGS Earth Explorer databases were analyzed to obtain surface temperature values of Atlantic Waste Landfill, Virginia and Bridgeton Landfill, Missouri. Multitemporal thermal maps and frequency of maxima analysis maps of these two landfills showed the hotspots spreading through the waste site. A Landfill Fire Index (LFI) was created by investigating eight factors that give information about the hazardousness of the landfill conditions …

Relaxation In Bolted Assemblies, Samuel Augustus Moeller

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this investigation were to (a) extend previously developed elastic spring models for bolt assemblies to include simulating creep loss in the bolt and the threads and (b) to present an approach in which appropriate spring stiffness in the model are determined rationally. Previous efforts at modeling tension in bolts have been limited in that they were not readily applicable to analyses of realistic bolted connections. The simulated load distributions on the shank and the threads in a single-bolt assembly showed good comparison to the gathered experimental data as did the simulated, time dependent creep loss in the …

Robust Speaker Recognition In The Presence Of Speech Coding Distortion, Robert Walter Mudrosky

Theses and Dissertations

For wireless remote access security, forensics, border control and surveillance applications, there is an emerging need for biometric speaker recognition systems to be robust to speech coding distortion. This thesis examines the robustness issue for three coders, namely, the ITU-T 6.3 kilobits per second (kbps) G.723.1, the ITU-T 8 kbps G.729 and the 12.2 kbps 3GPP GSM-AMR coder. Both speaker identification (SI) and speaker verification (SV) systems are considered and use a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifier. The systems are trained on clean speech and tested on the decoded speech. To mitigate the performance loss due to mismatched training and …

Sensitivity Studies On The Shear Lag Parameter Β Using Analytical And Numerical Techniques, George Thomas Avery

Theses and Dissertations

The strength of fiber-reinforced composites is dependent on the strength of the fiber-matrix interface bond. Thermal, chemical, and other means have been used to modify the surface of fibers, resulting in increased fiber-matrix interface bond strength. However, researchers are still dependent on empirical methods to relate surface modifications to composite performance. Additional efforts are required to develop physics-based models for micro-mechanical effects on interfacial bond strength that will be needed for the improved design and processing of fiber reinforced composites. It is anticipated that experimental, numerical, and analytical efforts will be needed to contribute toward this endeavor.

A numerical approach …

Design Maps For Fracture Resistant Functionally Graded Materials, Muhammad Ridwan Murshed

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research is to generate design maps to identify functionally graded microstructures with enhanced fracture toughness. Several Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) with an edge crack and membrane loading are considered and the resulting J-integral values are computed numerically using Finite Element Analysis. In order to capture the resulting stress fields accurately, Barsoum elements are used in the vicinity of the crack tip and the simulations are carried out for several crack lengths (a) and material contrasts (κ). The averages of the J-integral values are used to determine the normalized Stress Intensity Factors which are then benchmarked with …

Modeling Atypical Building Use With Commercially Available Building Simulation Software, Sarah E. Schanck

Theses and Dissertations

National Guard armories are audited to provide recommendations for future energy reduction measures. The annual energy consumption of a New Jersey National Guard Armories cannot be modeled directly with commercially available building simulation software, due to discrepancies between the modeling capabilities of the software and the reality of the armory. A building simulation software, eQUEST, was chosen for use in this project. Discrepancies between eQUEST inputs and reality were identified and correction factors developed to minimize the effect of each discrepancy on predicted energy consumption, with the end goal of accuracy between predicted and actual energy consumption. In addition, an …

Determination Of Non-Nuclear Alternative To The Nuclear Density Gauge Through Laboratory And Field Testing, Janine Abyad

Theses and Dissertations

Pavement performance is dependent on the compaction quality of unbound subgrade and base/subbase layers beneath flexible pavements. Pavement distresses can be linked to compaction defects within these layers. In current practice, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) utilizes the nuclear density gauge (NDG) for evaluating compaction quality based on minimum density requirements, typically 95% of the Proctor maximum dry density (MDD). However, there are concerns with using the NDG. The goal of this study was to replace the NDG with non-nuclear alternative method(s) as acceptance tools during field compaction. To achieve this, a laboratory procedure for compacting large samples …

Effect Of Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Adoption On Gas Tax Revenue, Local Pollution, And Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Neil Mccall

Theses and Dissertations

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) are likely to increase in popularity in the near future. However, the environmental benefits of PHEVs involve tradeoffs between the benefits of reduced tailpipe emissions against the drawbacks of increased emissions at marginal electric generation plants and reduced gasoline tax income. In this report, a model is developed that will enable these tradeoffs to be studied. The model accounts for local commuting patterns and marginal electric generation in New Jersey. The result allows the effect of PHEV adoption on gasoline tax, CO2, NOx and SOx to be predicted on a county level. Sample calculations are …

Sustainable P2 Design For Batch-Based Specialty Chemical Manufacture, Brigitte Pastore

Theses and Dissertations

A case study has been conducted on the reduction of n-methyl-2-pyrrilodone (NMP) solvent waste in the manufacture of polyimide and polybenzoxazole precursors. The evaluation includes the environmental and economic assessment of solvent recovery and substitution strategies. A two-step distillation process proved effective in recovering 95% of the NMP at a purity of 99.97% from the aqueous solvent waste stream. Yearly operating costs were reduced by 83% and total life cycle emissions were reduced by 44%, due to reduction in virgin NMP use and hazardous waste disposal. With capital acquisition, the recovery option would still result in a net present value …

Assessment Of Force Coordination And Neuromuscular Quickness In Healthy Adults, Karen L. Haberland

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout daily life, it is necessary to handle and control innumerable objects. To do so, one’s hands must be precisely regulated. To ensure that an object is effectively manipulated, an individual must apply a grip force (GF) perpendicular to the object’s surface to overcome load force (LF), which acts tangential to the surface to counteract the object’s weight and inertia. Previous studies have shown an elaborate coordination between GF and LF in a variety of object manipulation tasks in healthy populations. This kinetic analysis is clinically important because the GF-LF coordination is shown to deteriorate in aging and neurologically impaired …